Baldwin^ s Biographical Booklets \ 



THE STORY OF 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 

FOR YOUNG READERS 



I 



BY 

SHERWIN CODY 



WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 

CHICAGO NEW YORK flOST<)N 



BALDWIN'S BIOGRAPHICAL BOOKLETS 

THE STORY 

OF 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

FOR YOUNG READERS 

BY 

SHERWIN CODY 

Author of "The Art of Short Story Writing," 'Story Composition," 
"In the Heart of the Hills," etc. 




WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 




OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 



HOLMES 



CHAPTER I 

THE TRUE HUMORIST 

Oliver Wendell Holmes was the humorist among 
American poets, always with a smile around his 
mouth and a twinkle in his eye, and a kindly little 
half-hidden joke in everything he had to say. He 
was a humorist of the genuine good-humored sort, 
the ''genial Autocrat," the kindly and obliging 
friend (for did he not write a poem on every pos- 
sible occasion at the request of all sorts of people?) 
How kind, how pathetic, yet how amusing, are the 
sweet, quaint lines of "The Last Leaf": 

My grandmamma has said — 
Poor old lady, she is dead 

Long ago — 
That he had a Roman nose, 
And his cheek was like a rose 

In the snow; 

5 



But now his nose is thin, 
And it rests upon his chin 

Like a staff; 
And a crook is in his back, 
And a melancholy crack 

In his laugh. 

I know it is a sin 

For me to sit and grin 

At him here; 
But the old three-cornered hat, 
And the breeches, and all that, 

Are so queer! 

And if I should live to be 
The last leaf upon the tree 

In the spring. 
Let them smile, as I do now, 
At the old forsaken bough 

Where I cling. 

Dear Doctor Holmes! He did indeed live to be 
the last leaf upon the tree ; but to the very end he 
went scattering his humorous and good-humored 
words among his friends wherever he was, making 
people happier as well as wiser, more light-hearted 



as well as more thoughtful, until they turned from 
crying to laughing. "The Last Leaf" is a httle 
sad, notwithstanding its lightness and fun. But 
there is no sadness in this, the funniest poem that 
Holmes ever wrote: 

THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS 

I wrote some lines once on a time 

In wondrous merry mood, 
And thought, as usual, men would say 

They were exceeding good. 

They were so queer, so very queer, 

I laughed as I would die; 
Albeit in the general way, 

A sober man am I. 

I called my servant, and he came; 

How kind it was of him 
To mind a slender man like me. 

He of the mighty limb! 

'These to the printer," I exclaimed, 
And, in my humorous way, 
I added (as a trifling jest), 

"There '11 be the devil to pay." 



8 



He took the paper, and I watched^ 

And saw him peep within; 
At the first line he read, his face 

Was all upon the grin. 

He read the next, the grin grew broad, 

And shot from ear to ear; 
He read the third, a chuckling noise 

I now began to hear. 

The fourth, he broke into a roar; 

The fifth, his waistband split; 
The sixth, he burst five buttons off, 

And tumbled in a fit. 

Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye 
I watched that wretched man; 

And since, I never dare to write 
As funny as I can. 



CHAPTER II 



THE BIRTH OF OLIVER HOLMES 

" In the last week of August used to fall Com- 
mencement day at Cambridge," remarks the 
doctor. ' ' I remember that week well, for some- 



thing happened to me once at that time, namely, 
I was born." 

It was in the year 1809 — the same year that 
Gladstone, Tennyson, Darwin, and Lincoln were 
born — and on August 29. There is still in exist- 
ence an old and yellow almanac that belonged once 
to Dr. Abiel Holmes, Oliver's father. On the page 
given to August the numbers of the days run down 
the left-hand side, i, 2, 3, down to 28, 29, 30, 31. 
Opposite 29 are two little parallel lines, used as a 
star or mark of reference, and at the bottom of the 
page the two little lines are repeated, and after 
them is written in ink ''son ^. " Of course ''U' 
stands for ' ' born. " A few grains of black sand 
were scattered over the wet ink to prevent it from 
blotting, and some of those grains of sand may be 
I seen glistening there to this day. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes was born, and the fact of his birth was 
thus recorded in the almanac — ''son ^. " 

Samuel Johnson was born in 1709; or, as Holmes 
expresses it, ''the year 1709 was made ponder- 
ous and illustrious in English history by his birth. " 
It appeared to strike Holmes as a huge joke that 



lO 



he had been born just one hundred years after Dr. 
Johnson, and he amused himself by following out 
the parallel of their lives. Every year he used 
to take down his copy of Boswell's "Life of John- 
son" to see what the big, wise old grumbler was 
doing in that year, just a hundred years before. 
At last, in the year 1884, when he came to the 
end of Johnson's life, he said that he felt that 
the incubus was raised; he had outlived the pon- 
derous parallel. 

The birth of the ''laughing philosopher," as 
Holmes has been called, took place in a very old 
house in Cambridge, close to Harvard College, and 
'made famous in his poems as ''the old gambrel- 
roofed house." After the battle of Lexington, 
General-in-chief Artemas Ward had made this 
house the headquarters for the rallying of the 
patriots, and General Warren had stopped there 
on his way to Bunker Hill. George Washington 
and other famous men in those days must often 
have darkened its doors. 

For years it stood, this quaint old house in which 
Holmes was born and ^rew to manhood, and from 



II 

which he went to Harvard College; but before he 
died the property was sold to the University and 
the house was torn down. Holmes admitted that 
it was "a case of justifiable domicide. " He went 
to pay it a last visit, and ''found a ghost in each 
and every chamber and closet," and to each he 
said a fond goodbye. When the land was leveled 
down he did not care to go that way again. 

Oliver s father, Dr. Abiel Holmes, was an ortho- 
dox clergyman of the strictest kind. But he was 
nearly as good-natured as his son. He was a hand- 
some young man, and all the girls used to say, 
'' There goes Holmes — look !" 

Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson once 
found a letter written by his mother when she was 
a girl, in which she gives some gossip about Dr. Abiel. 
He sent it to his friend Oliver Wendell and you 
can imagine the doctor's amusement when he read 
the following paragraph: 

' ' Now, mamma, I am going to surprise you. 
Mr. Abiel Holmes, of Cambridge, whom we so 
kindly chalked out for Miss N. W., is going to be 
married and, of all folks in the world, guess who 



12 

to! Miss Sally Wendell! I am sure you will not 
believe it. However, it is an absolute fact, for Harriet 
and M. Jackson told Miss P. Russell so, who told 
us; it has been kept secret for six weeks, nobody 
knows for what. I could not believe it for some 
time, and scarcely can now; however, it is a fact, 
they say." 

Evidently girls a hundred years ago wrote much 
as they do now. 



CHAPTER HI 



AN AMERICAN ARISTOCRAT 

Oliver Wendell Holmes belonged to one of 
the most aristocratic families of Boston, and he 
seemed proud of it. But he was an aristocrat 
of the right sort. Said he : " I go for the man 
with the family portraits against the one with the 
twenty-cent daguerreotype, nnlcss I find out that 
the latter is the better of the two." He said also: 
'T like to see worthless rich people yield their 
places to deserving poor ones, who, beginning 
with sixpence or nothing, come out at last on 



Beacon street and have the sun come into their 
windows all the year round. " 

He inherited good blood through three lines, 
each of which was represented in his own name. 
The Oliver represents his Boston ' ' blue blood, " 
which came to him from both his father's and his 
mother's family. One of his ancestors was Lieu- 
tenant-Governor Andrew Oliver, the distributor of 
stamps in Boston, whom the people hated so, 
though he was one of the richest of the old 
Bostonians, had coaches, a chariot, and negro 
slaves, as well as good sterling silver plate that 
exists in the Holmes and Oliver families to this 
day. 

The Wendell stands for the old Dutch family 
of Wendells, who had moved from Albany to 
Boston, and who came originally from Embden, 
in East Friesland, just on the border line between 
Germany and the Netherlands. The Wendells 
are still a wealthy and influential family in Albany, 
solid old Dutch burghers. Two of Dr. Holmes's 
Dutch ancestors were shoemakers ; one was a fur 
trader. 



Another of Holmes's forefathers on his mother's 
side was Governor Thomas Dudley, of whom the 
famous Cotton Mather wrote these verses : 

" In books a prodigal, they say ; 
A living cyclopedia ; 
Of histories of church and priest, 
A full compendium, at least ; 
A table-talker, rich in sense, 
And witty without wit's pretense." 

Governor Dudley's daughter, Mrs. Anne Brad- 
street, from whom Holmes was descended, was 
the first American poet. In 1650 she published 
the first volume of verse ever written by an 
American. It came out in London, and was enti- 
tled "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in 
America," and so popular was it that it went 
through eight editions. Among the other descend- 
ants of this first American poetess were William 
Ellery Channing and Wendell Phillips. 

The first Holmes in the genealogy was a lawyer | 
of Gray's Inn, London. John Holmes was born 
near Boston, and went in 1686 to help settle 
Woodstock, Connecticut. Holmes's great-grand- 



15 

mother Bathsheba, the wife of David Hohnes, 
was a most remarkable lady. She was famous as 
a doctor and nurse. 

They tell a fine story of her daring, how once, 
in 1 717, when the snow almost buried the houses 
after a terrible storm, she climbed out of the 
upper window of her house in Woodstock and 
traveled on snowshoes over hill and dale to 
Dudley, Massachusetts, to attend a sick woman. 
I She was accompanied by two men, who held the 

Sends of a long pole, while she held on in the 
middle. 

There is another remarkable story told of her. 

Those were the days of Indian massacres. When 

the men went out to work they took their guns 

with them, leaving the women in the fort or gar- 

( rison house. 

Once the women when alone asked, "Who will 
go to the garden for vegetables?" Bathsheba 
Holmes alone dared venture out. She got her 
vegetables and came back, but not until years 
afterward did she know in what danger she had 
been. Then a solitary, decrepit Indian, broken 



i6 

in spirit, called at her door to beg for cider, prom- 
ising to tell her a story if he got his drink. 

She gave him the cider and he told his story. 
It related to the brave lady herself. He said that 
when she went to the garden for vegetables, on 
that occasion long ago, he had been hidden in 
the woods and had seen her, and had determined 
to kill her. He had bent his bow and aimed his 
arrow well, and in a moment he would have let 
it fly ; but a mysterious power stayed his arm ; he 
couldn't shoot. When she had gone safely into 
the garden he called himself a coward and deter- 
mined to have her life when she came out. 
But, as she passed on her way back to the fort, the 
same power stayed his arm again, and he won- 
dered that he could not kill a squaw. He had 
always thought that it was the Great Spirit who 
held his arm and saved her life. It was in this 
mysterious way that God preserved the line that 
was finally to give us the * ' genial autocrat, " the 
'* good doctor." 

Our poet's grandfather Holmes was a captain 
in the French and Indian war, and a suro^eon in 



17 

the Revolution, dying a year or two before the 
close of the latter war. 

So you see what a thorough aristocrat, of the 
true American kind, Oliver Wendell Holmes was. 



CHAPTER IV 



CAMBRIDGE 

Holmes, the poet, was born and brought up in a 
\ poetic town. The old, yellow, hip-roofed house 
stood close beside the grounds of Harvard College; 
and all around were homes of men who were 
famous or were to be famous. Cambridge has 
always been a quaint, quiet, peaceful, well-bred 
town. It stands at the back door of Boston, a half 
hour's walk from that ' ' hub of the solar system. " 
Elms and poplars line its streets, its houses look 
like rich old relics, and everywhere are evidences 
of comfort and culture. Imagine how George 
Washington and General Warren, and all the Rev- 
( olutionary heroes walked up and down these streets! 
Already in the time of Washington many famous 



i8 

people had lived there; and after him came a whole 
procession of great men, one after another — Long- 
fellow, Emerson, Sumner, Garrison, Motley — their 
names are too many to mention. 

In the center of the town are the Harvard Col- 
leg^e buildings, of brick and stone, some old, some 
new, surrounded by broad green lawns, and some 
of them overrun with ivy. Then, running out from 
the college grounds as a hub, are streets like the 
spokes of a wheel. In one direction is Mount 
Auburn cemetery, where hundreds of the famous 
dead lie buried, and which is the most beautiful 
cemetery in the United States. In another direc- 
tion are Lexington and Concord, while on another 
side the Charles River flows serenely along 
towards Boston Bay. 

Everywhere about are to be seen college students 
and professors. Here is a dapper young man with 
a pointed beard — the new professor of Eng- 
lish; there is a bent old man, white-haired, totter- 
ing in his gait — he is the famous professor of Greek. 
Some of the students are gay and always cracking 
jokes ; others have deepset eyes and shabby 



19 

clothes — ''plugs " the others call them, for they are 
very serious minded young fellows and never waste 
a moment of time. Then there are many more 
, who go singing and shouting through the streets at 
' late hours in the night, causing the people who are 
abed and asleep to be aroused from their slumbers 
only to stick their heads out of the windows and 
silently wish the young fellows were anywhere but 
in Cambridge. 

Such is this famous college town; and a very en- 
j joyable place it is to live in. A great many famous 
' people come here to preach in the churches, or to 
I lecture, or to speak at banquets and meetings. A 
• great many pretty girls come here to see the sights 
and visit their brothers — and look at the crowds of 
handsome young men. 

In this old college town, this young aristocrat, 
the descendant of patriots and governors and men 
of wealth and women of beauty, grew quietly up 
to manhood. He went to school, learned his les- 
sons well, but not too well, never got into trouble, 
had a good time, and did not fret or worry about 
anything, or annoy anybody, even his teachers. 



20 



There is a story of a famous feruling that he got — 
only one — and years afterward the teacher came to 
him to apologize. Holmes in a letter tells in his 
humorous way how the repentant master came and 
introduced himself to the now famous poet, how in 
an embarrassed manner he recalled old days, and 
finally the feruling, and then said he was sorry he 
had given it. Holmes declared he had richly de- 
served it; but the schoolmaster was glad to get 
away. Apologizing to a pupil for whipping him is 
indeed an embarrassing thing. 

It was not at school, however, but in his father's 
library that Oliver learned most. That room in 
the' corner of the old house where were the dents 
of the British muskets, was the study, and it was 
filled from floor to ceiling, every wall, with books. 
He says he " bumped about among books from the 
time when he was hardly taller than one of his 
father's or grandfather's folios. " 

Beside the library, there was the old garden, 
which he himself has quaintly described. "There 
were old lilac bushes at the right of the entrance, 
and in the corner at the left that remarkable moral 



21 



pear tree which gave me one of my first lessons in 
hfe. Its fruit never ripened, but always rotted at 
the core just before it began to grow mellow. It 
was a vulgar specimen at best, and was set there 
no doubt to preach its annual sermon. But in the 
northern border was a high-bred Saint Michael 
pear tree, which taught a lesson that all of gentle 
blood might take to heart; for its fruit used to get 
hard and dark, and break into unseemly cracks, so 
that when the lord of the harvest came for it, it 
was like those rich men's sons we see too often, who 
have never ripened, but only rusted, hardened, and 
shrunken. We had peaches, lovely nectarines, 
and sweet white grapes, growing and coming to 
kindly maturity in those days. 

' ' As for the garden beds, they were cared 
for by the Jonathan or Ephraim of the household, 
sometimes assisted by one Rube, a little old 
Scotch gardener, with a stippled face and a 
lively temper. Nothing but old-fashioned flowers 
in them — hyacinths pushing their green beaks 
through as soon as the snow was gone, or 
earlier; tulips, coming up in the shapes of cornu- 



22 

copise; peonies, butting their blunt way through the 
loosened earth; lilies, roses — damask, white, blush, 
cinnamon; larkspurs, lupines, and gorgeous holly- 
hocks. 

"The yellow-birds used to be very fond of some 
sunflowers that grew close to the pear tree with 
a moral. I remember their flitting about, golden 
in the golden light, over the golden flowers, as if 
they were flakes of curdled sunshine. " 

Oliver had a younger brother John, who was as 
light of heart and full of fun as he; and gay times 
they had together in this quiet old town, and this 
old house with its books and its garden. He says 
that as a boy he was afraid of the tall masts 
of ships that used to come up the river, and he 
would hide his eyes from them. And he was 
afraid, too, of a great wooden hand, the sign of a 
glove-maker whose shop he sometimes passed. 

So in happiness and comfort he dreamed his 
early years away, with his brothers and sisters and 
father and mother. He was like a fine, luscious 
pear in that old garden, ripening without rotting at 
the core, or yet getting hard and full of cracks. 



CHAPTER V 

SCHOOL LIFE 

When young Oliver was ten, he was sent about 
a mile away to a school where one of the pupils 
was Margaret Fuller, who afterwards became a 
famous writer. As a girl, says Holmes, she had 
the reputation of being ' 'smart. " Once she wrote a 
school essay which was shown to the father of 
Oliver. It began, ''It is a trite remark." But 
Oliver didn't know what trite meant. It was to him 
a crushing discovery of her superiority. She was 
stately and distant, as if she had great thoughts of 
her own ; she was a diligent student, and read a great 
many of what she called ' ' naw-vels. " "A remark- 
able point about her, " says Holmes, ' ' was that 
long, flexile neck, arching and undulating in 
strange sinuous movements, which one who loved 
her compared to those of a swan, and one who 
loved her not to the serpent that tempted Eve." 

After five years at this school, Oliver was taken 
to Andover, and left at the house of a professor in 
the theological seminary. He went to Phillips 



24 

Academy, where he studied a year preparatory to 
entering Harvard College. There he met a rosy- 
faced boy named Phineas Barnes, and the two 
became great friends. Phineas did not go to Har- 
vard College, and they were soon separated; but 
they always remained friends, and kept up a cor- 
respondence as long as they lived. 

At this time, says one of his biographers, he was 
an energetic and lively youngster, full of fun and 
mischief, with tendencies in the way of flageolets 
and flutes, and with a weakness for pistols and 
guns and cigars, which latter he would hide in the 
barrel of the pistol, where his mother's eyes would 
never care to look for them. 

One of the objects of most interest to the boys 
at this school was a tutor who had had a dream, 
that he would fall dead while he was praying. He 
regarded the dream as a warning, and asked the 
boys to come in turn to see him before he died. 
Says Holmes, '^More than one boy kept his eye 
on him during his devotions, possessed by the same 
feeling^ the man had who followed Van Amburo-h 
about with the expectation, let us not say hope, 



25 

of seeing the lion bite his head off sooner or 
later. " 

Years later he revisited these scenes. He says 
that the ghost of a boy was at his side as he wan- 
dered among the places he knew so well: " 'Two 
tickets for Boston, ' I said to the man at the station. 

' ' But the little ghost whispered, * When you 
leave this place you will leave me behind you.' 

' ' ' One ticket for Boston, if you please. Good- 
bye, little ghost.' " 

At last Holmes returned to Cambridge and 
immediately entered Harvard College, in ''the 
famous class of '29." He had many well-known 
classmates, among them the Rev. Samuel Francis 
Smith, the Rev. Dr. James Freeman Clarke, and 
others. Smith was afterwards famous as the 
author of " My Country, Tis of Thee, "and Dr. 
Holmes, in one of his poems, thus writes about 
him: 

And there's a nice 3^oungster of excellent pith, — 
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith; 
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free, — 
Just read on his medal, * My country ' ' of thee!' 



26 

Charles Sumner was in the next class below, and 
the famous historian Motley two classes below. 
Though Motley was the youngest student in the 
college, he and Holmes afterward became the most 
intimate of friends, and so remained through life; 
and when Motley was dead Holmes wrote his 
biography. 

Holmes said Motley looked the ideal of a young 
poet, and he goes on to describe him: "His 
finely shaped and expressive features, his large, 
luminous eyes, his dark waving hair, the singu- 
larly spirited set of his head, his well outlined 
figure, gave promise of manly beauty." 

After this description of Motley, read the follow- 
ing which Holmes gives of himself in a letter to 
Phineas Barnes: 

"I, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Junior in Harvard 
University, am a plumeless biped of exactly five 
feet three inches when standing in a pair of sub- 
stantial boots made by Mr. Russell of this town, 
having eyes which I call blue, and hair which I do 
not know what to call. 

* ' Secondly, with regard to my moral qualities. 



27 

I am rather lazy than otherwise, and certainly 
do not study as hard as I ought to. I am not 
dissipated and I am not sedate, and when I last 
ascertained my college rank I stood in the humble 
situation of seventeenth scholar. " 

In another letter written when in college to his 
friend Phineas he says: 

'''What do I do?' I read a httle, study a 
little, smoke a little, and eat a good deal. ' What 
do I think ? ' I think that's a deuced hard ques- 
tion. 'What have I been doing these three 
years ? ' Why, I have been growing a little in 
body, and I hope in mind; I have been learning a 
little of almost everything, and a good deal of some 
things." 

And in still another letter, he says: "I have 
been writing poetry like a madman, and then I 
have been talking sentiment like a turtle-dove, 
and gadding about among the sweet faces, and 
doing all such silly things that spoil you for 
everything else. This month of May is too good 
for anything but love." 



28 

CHAPTER VI 

COLLEGE LIFE 

Holmes was not only born within the present 
grounds of Harvard, he grew up there, was a stu- 
dent of Harvard, and a loyal member of the 
'' famous class of '29," a lecturer and professor at 
Harvard, and he became Harvard's most famous 
poet and man of letters, though Harvard has had 
so many that were great. So the life at Harvard 
College was always a part of his life ; and perhaps 
that is why he was so merry. 

College students are great jokers. In the days 
of Holmes the students decidedly objected to going 
to chapel early in the morning, rising as they had 
to do before daylight on cold winter days. To 
show that they didn't like this idea of early prayers, 
they would sometimes fasten firecrackers to the 
lids of the big Bible, so that when the president 
or a professor came to lead the exercises and 
opened the book, they would go off with a snap. 

In those days, too, they had only candles, and 
as prayers were held before daylight the chapel 



29 

candles had to be lighted. Sometimes the stu- 
dents would put pieces of lead where the wick 
ought to be, and when the candles burned down 
to the lead the lights went out, of course leaving 
the chapel in darkness. At other times the presi- 
dent would be startled on entering the pulpit by 
seeing a pig's head standing upright and bristly on 
his desk. 

The rooms in the college dormitories were very 
poorly furnished. Instead of matches they had 
flint and steel and a tinder-box; and in almost 
every room was a cannon ball, which the boys 
would heat red-hot and set on a metal frame of 
some sort to help keep the room warm. Some- 
times in the middle of the night a wicked student 
or two would send one of these cannon balls rolling, 
bump, bump, bump, down the stairs, waking every 
one and getting the proctor out of bed. Some- 
times, too, the cannon ball was hot and burned the 
fingers of the proctor when he tried to pick it up. 
Then woe to the young lad who was caught and 
proved to be the culprit. 

In college. Holmes belonged to two or three 



30 

clubs. One was the Hasty Pudding Club, which 
met in the rooms of the members. A worthy old 
lady of the village called Sister Stimson prepared 
the pudding in two huge pots; and the "providers" 
of the evening would sling these, filled with the 
boiling mush, on a stout pole, and, resting the ends 
upon their shoulders, mount gallantly to the room 
where the members were assembled, often in the 
third or fourth story. A bowl of hasty pudding 
was always carried to the officer in the entry, as a 
sort of peace offering; and when the members had 
eaten as much as they could, and had told all the 
stories they had to tell, the occupants of nearby 
rooms were invited to help finish up the repast. 

Another club to which he belonged was called the 
** Med. Facs.," and each member or officer had the 
title of a supposed professor in the Medical Faculty 
of the University. The first meeting of the year 
was held in an upper room, draped in black cotton 
and decorated with death's-heads and cross-bones 
in chalk; a table, also hung in black, extended 
lengthwise through the room. In the center sat 
the mock president and about him were the "pro- 



fessors" and ''assistant professors," all in black. 
Near at hand stood two policemen, usually the two 
strongest men in the class, dressed in flesh-colored 
tights. On the stairs outside were crowds of 
Juniors, from which twenty or thirty were to be 
initiated into the society. This initiation consisted 
usually in answering disagreeable questions put by 
the ''professors," or in doing such things as 
standing on one's head, crawling about the floor, 
singing Mother Goose melodies, or making a 
Latin or Greek oration. 

College Commencement in those days was like 
a country fair. The people pitched tents on the 
western side of the college yard (for there were then 
no hotels, and boarding was expensive), and opposite 
them were various stands and shows, making a 
street which by nightfall was paved with water- 
melon rinds, peachstones, and various refuse, on a 
ground of straw, — all flavored with rum and tobacco 
smoke. 

Holmes himself has well described this festival 
of the college year: 

' ' The fair plain (the Common), not then, as now. 



32 

cut up into cattle pens by the ugliest of known 
fences, swarmed with the joyous crowds. The 
ginger-beer carts rang their bells and popped their 
bottles, the fiddlers played Money Musk over and 
over and over, the sailors danced the double-shuffle, 
the gentlemen of the city capered in rusty jigs, the 
town ladies even took a part in the lusty exercise, the 
confectioners rattled red and white sugar plums, 
long sticks of candy, sugar and burnt almonds into 
their brass scales, the wedges of pie were driven 
into splitting mouths, the mountains of (clove- 
sprinkled) hams were cut down as Fort Hill is being 
sliced to-day; the hungry feeders sat still and con- 
centrated about the boards where the grosser viands 
were served, while the milk flowed from cracking 
cocoanuts, the fragrant muskmelons were cloven 
into new-moon crescents, and the great water- 
melons showed their cool pulps sparkling and roseate 
as the dewy fingers of Aurora. " 

And besides all this, there were the orations of 
the students, and the speeches of old graduates 
who now came back famous, and all the bustle and 
importance of the college men themselves, hurry- 



33 

ing to entertain their fair lady friends, their mothers, 
and their fathers, who had come up to see how 
they behaved. 



CHAPTER VII 



A BUDDING POET 

We have already seen in one of Holmes's letters 
to Phineas Barnes that while in college he was 
''writing poetry like mad." In the appendix to 
the latest complete edition of his poems you will 
find some lines translated from the yE^neid while 
he was a student at Andover, not yet sixteen years 
old. In college he was poet to the Hasty Pudding 
Club; had a poem at Exhibition, one at Commence- 
ment, and was elected class poet; besides that, he 
joined several classm.ates in a volume of satirical 
poems on the first regular art exhibition in Boston. 

When he finished his college course he studied 
law for a year, though his father rather wished him 
to be a clergyman. Says he, "I might have been 
a clergyman myself, for aught I know, if a certain 
clergyman had not looked and talked so like an 



34 

undertaker. " Think of the Httle smooth-voiced joker 
in the pulpit! In another place he says, ''How 
grandly the procession of old clergymen who filled 
our pulpit from time to time, and passed the day 
under our roof, marches before my closed eyes!" 
You must remember that Holmes was the son of 
the orthodox clergyman of Cambridge, and these 
were the men who exchanged pulpits with his father. 
At first, as an experiment, he studied law for a 
year; but he did not work very hard. He was 
writing poetry. A paper called the Collegian was 
started, and he contributed twenty-five or more 
poems to it, among which were some of his fun- 
niest and best. "The Last Leaf" and "The 
Height of the Ridiculous " were among the work of 
that first poetic year of his. He never thought 
much of these poems, though some people consider 
them quite as good as the poems of the famous 
Thomas Hood, who wrote — 

''Take her up tenderly, 
Lift her with care, — 
Fashioned so slenderly, 
Young and so fair!" 



35 

Because he didn't like them, or thought them 
too rolhcking, he did not reprint many of them. 
Here is one, perhaps the first of his poems ever 
printed with his name, which appeared in Feb- 
ruary, 1830, under the title ** Runaway Ballad": 

I 

Wake from thy slumbers, Isabel, the stars are in the sky, 
And night has hung her silver lamp, to light her altar by; 
The flowers have closed their faded leaves, and drooped 

upon the plain; 
Oh! wake thee, and their dying hues shall blush to life 

again. 

II 

Get up! get up! Miss Polly Jones, the tandem's at the 

door; 
Get up and shake your lovely bones, it's twelve o'clock 

and more; 
The chaises they have rattled by, and nothing stirs around. 
And all the world but you and me are snoring safe and 

sound. 

Ill 

I've got my uncle's bay, and trotting Peggy, too, 
I've lined their tripes with oats and hay, and now for love 
and you! 



36 

The lash is curling in the air, and I am at your side; 
To-morrow 3^ou are Mrs. Snaggs, my bold and blooming 
bride. 

Here is another, entitled *' Romance": 

Oil! she was a maid of a laughing eye, 
And she lived in a garret cold and high; 
And he was a threadbare, whiskered beau, 
And he lived in a cellar damp and low. 

But not all his early poems were nonsense like 
these. One day, in the fall of 1830, he read in the 
Boston Advertise}' a paragraph saying that the 
Navy Department at Washington intended to 
break up the frigate Constitution, which had 
fought so bravely in the War of 18 12, and won 
such glory for the American people. Immediately 
he wrote the following poem, which stands at the 
beginning of his collected works: 

OLD IRONSIDES. 

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! ' 

Long has it waved on high, 
And many an eye has danced to see 

The banner in the sky; 



37 

Beneath it rung the battle shout, 

And burst the cannon's roar; — 
The meteor of the ocean air 

Shall sweep the clouds no more. 

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood, 

Where knelt the vanquished foe. 
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood, 

And waves were white below, 
No more shall feel the victor's tread. 

Or know the conquered knee; — 
The harpies of the shore shall pluck 

The eagle of the sea! 

Oh, better that her shattered hulk 

Should sink beneath the wave; 
Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 

And there should be her grave; 
Nail to the mast her holy flag. 

Set every threadbare sail. 
And give her to the god of storms, 

The lightning and the gale! 

This stirring poem was published on the next 
day but one, and was immediately copied into 
nearly every newspaper in the United States. 
Copies were even printed as handbills and distrib- 



38 

uted about the city of Washington. Because 
the people felt so badly about it, the Navy 
Department at last decided not to break up Old 
Ironsides. 



CHAPTER VIII 



DOCTOR HOLMES 

Young Mr. Holmes wrote so much poetry he 
had little time for law during the twelve months 
after his graduation. So at the end of the year 
he gave up law and began to study medicine. At 
first he felt his heart come up into his throat at 
the sight of skeletons grinning at him from the 
walls; and his cheek grew pale as the hospital 
sheets when he passed among the sufferers and 
saw the dead and dying, or helped to perform a 
surgical operation ; but after a time these things 
were to him as nothing, mere every-day affairs. 

About the same time, too, he became a collector 
of rare old books. In 1833, when he had finished 
his medical education as far as he could at home, 
he went to Europe to complete his studies in the 



39 

hospitals of Paris and other cities. He remained 
there two years and a half, and in that time he 
had a chance to pick up some rare and queer old 
volumes. 

He returned a full-fledged doctor; but he seems 
to have felt that he had neglected poetry long 
enough, and soon published his first book, which 
is dated 1836. He had been invited to read a 
long and serious poem before the Phi Beta 
Kappa society of Harvard, and this he made the 
chief poem of his little volume, including more 
than forty others. Beside the early humorous 
poems which we have already referred to, there 
was the well-known poem ''The September 
Gale," beginning, — 

I'm not a chicken ; I have seen 
Full many a chill September, — 

and ending, — 

And not till fate has cut the las<: 

Of all my earthly stitches, 
This aching heart shall cease to mourn 

My loved, my long-lost breeches ! 



40 

George Ticknor Curtis describes the youthful 
poet in the following bright paragraph: 

''Dr. Holmes had then just returned from 
Europe. Extremely youthful in his appearance, 
bubbhng over with the mingled humor and pathos 
that have always marked his poetry, and spark- 
ling with coruscations of his peculiar genius, his 
Phi Beta Kappa poem of 1836, delivered with a 
clear, ringing enunciation, which imparted to the 
hearers his own enjoyment of his thoughts and 
expressions, delighted a cultivated audience to a 
very uncommon degree. " 

Here is another description of the reading of 
the same poem, which was printed in TJie Atlantic 
Monthly: 

"A brilliant, airy, and spiritiielle manner, 
varied with striking flexibility to the changing 
sentiment of the poem, — now deeply impassioned, 
now gayly joyous and nonchalant, and anon 
springing up almost into an actual flight of rhap- 
sody, — rendered the delivery of this poem a rich, 
nearly a dramatic, entertainment, such as we have 
rarely witnessed." 



41 

Abraham Lincoln read and admired the poems 
in this first Httle volume. Once, in conversation, 
he remarked, ''There are some quaint, queer 
verses, written, I think, by Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, entitled ' The Last Leaf, ' one of which 
is to me inexpressibly touching." He then re- 
peated the poem from memory, and as he finished 
this much-admired stanza, — 

The mossy marbles rest 

On the lips that he has prest 

In their bloom ; 
And the names he loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 

On the tomb, — 

he said, "For pure pathos, in my judgment, 
there is nothing finer than those six lines in the 
English language." Perhaps Lincoln was thinking 
of the lonely grave of his own first love in Illinois, 
for he once said, " Oh, I cannot bear the thought 
of her lying out there with the storms beating 
upon her." 

Holmes, having received his degree of M.D. 
from Harvard College, began practicing med- 



42 

icine in Boston. He was young and popular, 
he was related to the best families, and he had 
the best medical education the world could give. 
The result was that he had plenty of practice. 
He didn't believe much in giving medicine, and 
his doses were usually very small. He would 
enter the sick-room with a bright, cheerful smile 
on his face that of itself made the patient soon 
feel better. In one of his books he gives this 
maxim : ' ' When visiting a patient enter the sick- 
room at once, without keeping the patient in the 
torture of suspense by discussing the case with 
others in another room." 

Prize medals were offered in Boston for medical 
essays, and in the first two years after he began 
practicing medicine he gained three of these 
medals. In 1838, after two years in Boston, he 
was appointed professor of anatomy and physiol- 
ogy in Dartmouth College. He remained there two 
years, at the end of which time he resigned. He 
then came back to Boston and married the dau^rh- 
ter of Judge Charles Jackson. He and his wife 
took a house in the very heart of Boston, in a 



43 

little court leading out of Tremont street, and 
there they lived for nearly twenty years. ' ' When 
he first entered that house two shadows glided 
over the threshold ; five lingered in the doorway 
when he passed through it for the last time, — and 
one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to 
be longer than his own." Those other shadows 
were his children, his eldest son being taller than 
the doctor himself. In the surrounding houses 
there had been sorrow and disappointment and 
death. ' ' The whole drama of life was played in 
that stock company's theatre of a dozen houses, 
one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe 
calamity ever entered his dwelling. Peace be to 
those walls, forever," the professor said, *'for 
the many pleasant years he has passed within 
them. " 

He had two sons and a daughter. The oldest 
son was named Oliver Wendell, and became a 
judge. The other son, Edward, was also a law- 
yer. The daughter, named after his wife Amelia 
Jackson, married Mr. John Turner Sargent, and 
it was at her country home at Beverly Farms that 



44 

Holmes spent much of his time toward the end of 
his hfe. 

He practiced medicine again in Boston for seven 
years, when he accepted an appointment as pro- 
fessor of anatomy and physiology in Harvard 
Medical School. This professorship he held for 
thirty-five years, when he resigned on account of 
old age. 

He had a beautiful country home called Canoe 
Place, in the Berkshire Hills, in western Massa- 
chusetts. There he spent ''seven happy summer 
vacations, which," he declares, "stand in his 
memory like the seven golden candlesticks seen in 
the beatific vision of the holy dreamer." Some 
famous literary people lived near by, among them 
Herman Melville, the novelist and traveler, and 
not far away were Miss Sedgwick and Fanny 
Kemble, and for a short time Hawthorne. The 
doctor's dwelling was a modest one, he tells us, — 
"not glorious, yet not unlovely in the youth of its 
drab and mahogany, — full of great and little boys' 
playthings." This place had come to him by 
inheritance from his mother. 



45 
CHAPTER IX 

THE AUTOCRAT 

In 1852 Holmes delivered a course of lectures 
on the ''English Poets of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury," — Wordsworth, Moore, Keats, Shelley, and 
others. At the end of each lecture he read a 
poem, and these poems now appear in his collected 
works as ' * After a Lecture on Wordsworth, " 
"After a Lecture on Moore," etc. 

In a letter to an official he states the terms on 
which he is willing to give this course of lectures in 
various towns and cities: 

' ' My terms for a lecture, when I stay over 
night, are fifteen dollars and expenses, a room 
with a fire in it, in a public house, and a mattress to 
sleep on, — not a feather bed. As you write in 
your individual capacity, I tell you at once all my 
habitual exigencies. I am afraid to sleep in a cold 
room ; I can't sleep on a feather bed ; I will not 
go to private houses ; and I have fixed upon the 
sum mentioned as what it is worth to go away for 
the night to places that cannot pay more." 



46 

The landlady in the "Autocrat of the Break- 
fast Table " also has something to say about his 
lectures: 

"He was a man that loved to stick around 
home as much as any cat you ever see in your life. 
He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth pulled as 
go away anywheres. Always got sick, he said, 
when he went away, and never sick when he 
didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin' about 
lecturing two or three winters, — talkin' in cold 
country lyceums, — as he used to say, — goin' home 
to cold parlors and bein' treated to cold apples and 
cold water ; and then goin' up into a cold bed in a 
cold chamber, and comin' home next mornin' with 
a cold in his head as bad as the horse distemper." 

Perhaps this is why Holmes was not more of a 
traveler, going to Europe but twice, and hardly 
ever leaving his birthplace of Cambridge or his 
home in Boston. 

So twenty years passed by after he published 
his first volume of poems before he did anything 
else very literary. His fellow professor Long- 
fellow had become famous ; and so had Haw- 



47 

thorne ; and so, too, had Lowell and Whittier. 
But Holmes seemed to have no desire for fame. 
He had written a few amusing poems, and delivered 
some lectures. 

But when the Atlantic Monthly was about to be 
started, all the literary folk turned to Holmes and 
said, ' ' That jolly old fellow could write something 
good, if he only would. " 

The young publishers, Phillips & Sampson, were 
enthusiastic about the new magazine. Lowell was 
chosen editor, and Francis H. Underwood was 
assistant, though the idea was originally his. 
They called in Longfellow and Emerson, and 
Motley and Holmes. This distinguished company 
met at a dinner and talked over the new project. 
Holmes suggested the name Atlantic Monthly. 
Longfellow would contribute a poem now and 
then, and Emerson an essay from time to time ; 
but poems and essays do not fill up a magazine 
very fast. So Lowell determined to get some- 
thing from Holmes, some light, gossipy prose, 
that should continue on from month to month. 
The doctor remembered that he had written some 



48 

papers twenty-five years before for the ATew Eng- 
land Jlfao-azine, and he determined to ' ' shake the 
same bough again " and see what fruit he could 
oret. So he began where he had left off all those 
years before with an " As-I-was-saying." And for 
a year or more, every month in the Atlantic, the 
*' Autocrat " gave his opinions of life, cracked his 
little jokes on men and things, recited a poem, or 
gossiped with his landlady and fellow boarders. 
And each month that distinguished literary com- 
pany met at some hotel or restaurant in Boston 
and had a dinner which was a feast of reason and 
good things for the mind and heart as well as for 
the stomach ; and Holmes was the wit and soul of 
every banquet. 

At last Oliver Wendell Holmes had come before 
the world as a great poet and a great humorist. 
The ' ' Autocrat " is the very soul of humor, so 
genial, so wise in his good advice, so gay in his 
good nature, so light and sparkling and kind. 
Now was published "The Deacon's Masterpiece, 
or, The Wonderful One-Hoss Sha}^"; and by its 
side that most beautiful of all the poems Holmes 



49 

ever wrote, ''The Chambered Nautilus." When 
the Princess of Wales asked him to write in her 
album, he copied the last verse of "The Cham.- 
bered Nautilus," as he had done in the album of 
many a subject of our great republic. Listen ! 
Holmes could be stately and beautiful as well as 
gay and humorous : 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 

As the swift seasons roll! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free, 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! 

If you wish to know the wise things Holmes 
said about anything and everything, read * ' The 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." Here are a 
few bright sayings which you will not find in that 
book, but which will give you an idea of the kind 
of things with which the volume is filled : 

"An Indian is a few instincts on legs, and hold- 
ing a tomahawk." 

" If a doctor has the luck to find out a new 



50 

malady, it is tied to his name like a tin kettle to a 
dog's tail, and he goes clattering down the highway 
of fame to posterity with his seolian attachment 
following at his heels. " 

Gunpowder : * ' Chemistry seals up a few dark 
grains in iron vases, and lo! at the touch of a 
single spark, rises in smoke and flames a mighty 
Afrit with a voice like thunder and an arm that 
shatters like an earthquake." 

"The scholar's mind is furnished with shelves 
like his library. Each book knows its place in the 
brain as well as against the wall or in the alcove. 
His consciousness is doubled by the books which 
encircle him, as the trees that surround a lake 
repeat themselves in its unruffled waters. Men 
talk of the nerve that runs to the pocket, but one 
who loves his books, and has lived long with them, 
has a nervous filament v/hich runs from his sen- 
sorium to every one of them. " 

* * Slang — is the way in which a lazy adult shifts 
the trouble of finding any exact meaning in his (or 
her) conversation on the other party. If both 
talkers are indolent, all their talk lapses into the 



51 

vague generalities of childhood. It is a prevalent 
social vice of the time, as it has been of times that 
are past." 

Perhaps the most famous expression in the 
''Autocrat" is that in which he calls Boston 
' ' the hub of the solar system " (often wrongly 
quoted as "the hub of the universe"). 

"The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" was 
such a success that it sold the Atlantic Monthly 
by the thousands of copies. The editors and pub- 
lishers both said, "This is just the thing : give us 
more, give us more." So Holmes wrote another 
book, which he called ' ' The Professor at the 
Breakfast Table"; and then "The Poet at the 
Breakfast Table. " 

In the "Autocrat" Holmes said that every man 
had in him the writing of at least one novel. As 
the demand for his work was great, he thought he 
would write one. So he produced ' ' Elsie Venner, 
a Romance of Destiny." It is a strange story of 
a girl who has the nature of a snake. Holmes 
had heard of cases like that of Elsie Venner, and 
he worked her story oat in a scientific manner. 



52 

We read it as if it were really true, and it exer- 
cises a weird fascination over us. 

Later he wrote another novel, entitled *'The 
Guardian Angel. " 

CHAPTER X 

"THE FAMOUS CLASS OF '29" 

Holmes was the poet of the occasional, if ever 
there was one. If anybody held a meeting about 
anything, and Holmes was asked to read a poem, 
he kindly consented to do so. Who ever heard of 
opening a meeting of a medical society with a poem? 
Yet Holmes read an original poem at many a 
meeting of the Massachusetts Medical Society. 

It was at the yearly meeting of *'the famous 
class of '29" that he read his poems oftenest. 
Every year for sixty years, this loyal poet remained 
true to class traditions. A poem from Holmes 
was always expected, and the class always got it. 

A college class is a band of friends, friends who 
have passed the merriest years of their lives 
together. They come to college from the country 
over, from homes poor and rich, distant and near. 



53 

For four years they live together, all on an equal 
footing, all together blooming into manhood. 
Then they scatter to their various duties in the 
world. One is a lawyer, another a journalist, 
another a clergyman, another a doctor, and others 
are business men. Yet how can they ever forget 
those happy years together? 

Each year all those members of the class of '29 
who could do so would come together at Com- 
mencement time to renew old memories. Some of 
the class were perhaps over seas and in foreign 
lands; some, alas! were dead. So, as the years 
passed by, the number grew smaller and smaller, 
and the gathering became sadder and sadder; yet 
none of them would have missed it. 

The first class poem in Holmes's works is en- 
titled "Bill and Joe," and begins thus: 

Come, dear old comrades, you and I 
Will steal an hour from days gone by, 
The shining days when life was new, 
And all was bright with morning dew, 
The lusty days of long ago, 
When you were Bill and I was Joe. 



54 

Most of these verses are of sad memories of 
happy times gone forever: 

Where, oh, where are the visions of morning, 

Fresh as the dews of our prime? 
Gone, like the tenants that quit without warning, 

Down the back entry of time. 

But some are poems of dear friendship and 
pleasure at seeing friends again, hke this, called 
' ' Indian Summer " : 

You'll believe me, dear boys, 'tis a pleasure to rise, 
With a welcome like this in your darling old eyes; 
To meet the same smiles and to hear the same tone 
Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown. 

One poem entitled "The Boys" is well worth 
remembering, especially the last stanzas: 

Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray! 
The stars of its winter, the dews of its May! 
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys, 
Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys! 

During the times of the great Civil War the 
poems were mostly of a patriotic kind. Here, for 



55 

instance, is the way he opens his poem in 1862, 
entitled "The Good Ship Union": 

'Tis midnight: through my troubled dream 

Loud wails the tempest's cry; 
Before the gale, with tattered sail, 

A ship goes plunging by. 
What name? Where bound? — The rocks around 

Repeat the loud halloo. 
. — The good ship Union, Southward bound: 

God help her and her crew ! 

In 1878 he wrote a poem on "The Last Sur-= 
vivor, " which opens with these beautiful lines: 

Yes! the vacant chairs tell sadly we are going, going fast. 
And the thought comes strangely o'er me. Who will live to 
be the last ? 

Let US add one more verse, a humorous verse 
in which the joker pretends he's not so very old: 

I don't think I feel much older; I'm aware I'm rather gray; 
But so are many young folks, — I meet 'em every day. 
I confess I'm more particular in what I eat and drink. 
But one's taste improves with culture; that is all it means, 
I think, 



56 

Cayi you read as once you used to? Well, the printing is so bad, 
No young folks' eyes can read it like the books that once 

we had. 
Are you quite as quick of hearing? Please to say that once 

again. 
Do7i't I use plain words, your Revere?ice? Yes, I often use 

a cane. 

Ah, well, — I know — at every age life has a certaiii charm, — 
You're going? Come, permit me, please, I beg you' II take 

viy arm. 
I take your arm! Why take your arm? I'd thank you to 

be told 
I'm old enough to walk alone, but not so very old. 

At last, in 1889, the poems stopped, because 
there were so few of the class left, and the meet- 
ings were so sad. In 1891, Holmes writes to a 
friend: " Our old raft of eighteen-twenty-niners is 
going to pieces; for the first time no class-meeting 
is called for the 8th of Januar3^ I shall try to get 
the poor remnant of the class together at my 
house; but it is doubtful whether there is life 
enough left for a gathering of half a dozen. I 
have a very tender feeling to my coevals." 



57 
CHAPTER XI 

A FEW STRAY FACTS 

In 1858 Holmes moved from his house in Mont- 
gomery Place to 2 1 Charles street, near the 
Charles River; and here he was neighbor to Gov- 
ernor Andrew, the war governor of Massachusetts, 
and James T. Fields, the publisher. He afterward 
occupied another house on Charles street, and 
finally, in 1871, moved to Beacon street, where 
was his home to the end of his life. 

In 1882 he resigned his professorship at Har- 
vard and devoted himself to literary work, writing, 
after this, his last book of table talks, which he 
called ''Over the Teacups." In 1886 he visited 
Europe. With the exception of the journey which 
he took when a young man studying medicine, this 
was his only trip abroad. He was gone only four 
months, including the voyage both ways, and spent 
most of his time in the little isle of Britain. It 
seemed as if he disliked being long away from 
home, or even away from Boston. 

Dr. Holmes was an ingenious man, and had 



58 

many fads and fancies. He was the inventor of 
the small stereoscope for hand use, — such as those 
used for looking at photographs. The first one he 
made himself entirely, all but the lenses, and he 
often used to say that he might have made a for- 
tune out of this invention if he had patented it. 
Yet, he seems never to have regretted that he had 
not done so, thinking perhaps that the public had 
been the gainer by his loss. 

A life-long hobby of his was photography — be- 
ginning in the days when this art was not so easy 
and common as it is now. He became a really 
skillful artist in it, and made many pictures of the 
old gambrel-roofed house and scenes about Harvard 
College, which have been preserved and may prove 
useful to future historians. 

Once he thought he could learn to play on 
the violin. As a matter of fact, he had no ear 
for harmony, and could never produce music. 
Still, he shut himself up in his study and 
scraped away hour after hour, for two or three 
winters. At the end of that time he could play 
two or three simple tunes so that they could be 



59 

recognized; then he gave it up and never played 
any more. 

One of his fads was the measuring of large 
trees. When he traveled about the country he 
always had a measuring tape in his pocket, and 
this he would stretch around the trunk of every 
bio- tree he saw. When he went to England he 
pulled out his bit of string to see if the giant trees 
of Old England were as big as the giant trees of 
New England. He tells with what bated breath 
and beating, fearful heart he measured one tree in 
particular in England with a string on which he had 
measured off the trunk of another big tree in 
America. - Twenty feet, and a long piece of 
string left !" he exclaims, when telling of it. 
' ' Twenty-one feet — twenty-two — twenty-three, — 
an extra heart-beat or two,— twenty-four— twenty- 
five, and six inches over ! ! " 

He finally became so noted as an authority on 
big trees that he was consulted even by the 
famous botanist, Professor Asa Gray. 

In "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" 
you may read of a slice of a hemlock tree, going 



6o 

straight to the center, and showing three hundred 
and forty-two rings, each ring representing a year 
of hfe. Holmes really had this tree section, and 
spent much time sticking pins in at the various 
rings, each pin tagged with the date of some event 
that was taking place when the ring was forming. 

We have already spoken of his love for old 
books. In the "Autocrat" he says: "I like 
books — I was born and bred among them, and 
have the easy feelings, when I get into their pres- 
ence, that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't 
think I undervalue them, either as companions or 
instructors." He was not only an expert in judg- 
ing an old and beautiful book, but he understood 
the art of bookbinding, and sometimes practiced 
it. Here is a sentence of his about books that we 
should all remember: "Some books are edifices, 
to stand as they are built ; some are hewn stones, 
ready to form a part of future edifices ; some are 
quarries, from which stones are to be split for 
shaping and after use." 

Any one who has read the stirring ballad of 
"Old Blue," entitled " How the Old Horse Won 



6i 

the Bet, " will guess that Holmes knew something 
about horse-racing. What could be more vivid 
than this: 

*'Go !" — Through his ears the summons stung 

As if a battle-trump had rung; 

The slumbering instincts long unstirred 

Started at the old familiar word; 

It thrills like flame through every limb, — 

What means his twent}' years to him? 

The savage blow his rider dealt 

Fell on his hollow flanks unfelt; 

The spur that pricked his staring hide 

Unheeded tore his bleeding side; 

Alike to him are spur and rein, — 

He steps a five-year-old again I 

One of his most cherished memories was that of 
seeing the famous steed Plenipotentiary win the 
Derby; this was when Holmes was in England as 
a young man; and indeed he knew "a neat, snug 
hoof, a delicate pastern, a broad haunch, a deep 
chest, a close ribbed-up barrel, as well as any 
other man in the town. " 

Besides these things, he was fond of boxincr, of 



62 

boating, and other forms of sport; and he knew the 
fine points about all of these manly pastimes. 

You must not think, however, that Holmes was 
not a hard worker and a careful student. He 
wrote easily and freely, but revised with the great- 
est care; and he prepared his college lectures over 
every year, keeping them up to date while he was 
constantly studying and reading and learning new 
things about his profession. 



CHAPTER XII 



THE END COMES 

The life of Oliver Wendell Holmes flowed like 
a placid river, with scarcely a ripple upon its sur- 
face. He was born and grew up and passed all his 
life near that *'hub " he has made so famous, sur- 
rounded by throngs of friends, never visited by 
sorrow, always fortunate, always happy. He 
found amusement in everything, for he looked 
on the bright side of life and turned everything into 
humor. And at last he died, painlessly, serenely, 



63 

sitting in his chair, having been up and about to 
the very last day. This final event — we cannot 
call it sad — occurred October 7, 1894. He was 
eighty-five years old. 

We cannot better close this study of America's 
most genial poet-humorist than by quoting the fol- 
lowing appreciative and most touching Imes from 
an English journal: 

''THE AUTOCRAT" 

*' The Last Leaf ! " Can it be true. 
We have turned it, and on you, 

Friend of all ? 
That the years at last have power ? 
That life's foliage and its flower 

Fade and fall ? 

Was there one who ever took 
From its shelf, by chance, a book 

Penned by you, 
But was fast your friend for life, 
With one refuge from its strife 

Safe and true ? 

^ 5fC 5|s ?tC -^ 



64 

From the Boston breakfast table 
Wit and wisdom, fun and fable, 

Radiated 
Through all English-speaking places. 
When were science and the Graces 

So well mated ? 

Of sweet singers the most sane, 
Of keen wits the most humane. 

Wide, yet clear. 
Like the blue, above us bent, 
Giving sense and sentiment 

Each its sphere ; 

With a manly breadth of soul. 
And a fancy quaint and droll, 

Ripe and mellow ; 
With a virile power of ''hit," 
Finished scholar, poet, wit, 

And good fellow ! 

Years your spirit could not tame, 

And they will not dim your fame; 

England joys 

In your songs, all strength and ease, 

And the "dreams " you "wrote to please 

Gray-haired boys." 

— Lo7ido7i Pimch. 



I'CJUry (jrvCA. I James Baldwin, Ph. D. 

AMERICANS'' SERIES 

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Baldwin's Biographical Booklets are bound in cloth, 
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IV. Four American Poets. 

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TN contrast with the old, classic tales and the lessons 
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t23 Pages. Price 40 Cents. 

'T^HIS little volume presents one of the greatest epics 
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afaj/ettcy 



The 



THE BOOK OF 
THE HOUR for 
THE YOUTH 
OF AMERICA.. 






Just 
Published. 



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Z^hc proposal to erect a monument in Paris to the 
early friend of American liberty, GENERAL 
LAFAYETTE, by contributions from the patriotic 
school children of the United States, has aroused 
national enthusiasm for the memory of this noble 



man. 



In view of the great interest which this 
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just issued, edited by Dr. James Baldwin, 

''LAFAYETTE 

THE FRIEND OF AMERICAN LIBERTY," 



By Mrs. ALMA HOLMAN BURTON, 

The author of ** Four American Patriots," 
" The Story of Our Country,' 

A TIMELY CONTRIBUTION OF GREAT VALUE 
TO PATRIOTIC EDUCATIONAL LITERATURE. 



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...Company* 



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Hall's Complete Arithmetic 60 

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Brown and DeGarmo's Elements of English Grammar 60 

The Werner Introductory Geography (Tarbell) 55 

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Baldwin's Primary Lessons in Physiology and Hygiene 35 

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Baldwin's Advanced Lessons in Physiology and Hygiene 80 

The Werner Primer (Taylor) 30 

First Year Nature Keader ( Beebe and Kingsley) 35 

Old Time Stories Retold (Smythe) 30 

Legends of the Red Children (Pratt) 30 

Baldwin's Biographical Booklets (each) 10 

Bald\\-in's Four Great Americans 50 

Burton's Four American Patriots 50 

Beebe's Four American Naval Heroes 50 

Cody's Four American Poets 50 

Winship's Great American Educators 50 

Burton's Lafayette, the Friend of American Liberty 35 

Burton's Story of Our Country 60 

The Werner Mental Arithmetic 30 

Giffin's Grammar School Algebra 50 

Adams's Physical Laboratory Manual 75 

Hinsdale's Studies in Education 1 00 

Hinsdale's Training for Citizenship 10 

Hinsdale's American Government I 25 

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Barnard's History and Civil Government of Missouri 1 00 

Lewis's History and Civil Government of West Virginia 1 00 

Niles's History and Civil Government of Minnesota 1 00 

Seerley and Parish's History and Civil Gov't of Iowa 1 00 

Smith and Young's History and Civil Government of South Dakota 1 00 

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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